Yes, I think it’s funny now. I can appreciate the joke today. Many years ago, I wrote a book about driving fifty thousand miles back and forth across America. “Motorist” was part of my bio. I owned a radar detector. Then last year, I experienced a big budget panic attack on Interstate 15 while boxed between two semi-trucks. Soon I couldn’t even look at a highway ramp without seeing spots and getting dizzy. I began to research my routes in advance, telling myself I preferred the scenic route, even when going to the mall. I studied satellite images to ensure there would be side streets and shoulders, nothing that would leave me feeling boxed in again. My world got small.
Panic is an attack on reason. The world sparkles like it might evaporate. Arms go swimmy. The body feels like it’s been turned inside out, and the heart jackhammers against bone, trying to escape this mess. It’s a hell of a thing to experience at eighty miles per hour. Under these conditions, it's impossible to practice the tools I've learned for surviving the 21st century: breathe through the nose, tune into the moment, and remember that I belong to the deathless, that I'm a little beacon of joy beyond body and form. No, the lizard brain takes control: I scream. I hyperventilate. I swerve toward the nearest exit.
Why must the mind torture itself? They say a panic attack is residue from our Stone Age brains, a glitch in the wiring, although I fail to see how such a reaction would save me from a tiger. Or maybe panic disorder is a Jungian arrow pointing to an unsettled problem, and my anima needs alignment. But my hunch is that it’s genetic. My mother suffered terribly from agoraphobia. She avoided the highway, even as a passenger, and now this is happening to me. My inheritance.
So I’m giving psychology a shot, and it was long overdue. Gutting it out wasn’t getting me very far. My therapist taught me how to give myself a panic attack in twenty seconds flat, which is a fun party trick. He wants me to do this five times per day, and I do. At night, I drive the Midwestern highways, trying to get my interstate mojo back. Each day, I feel a bit better, even though the world feels a little more insane.
Perhaps my highway panic reflects a loss of faith in the human project. Because you have to kid yourself a little when you get on the freeway, not think about it too hard—all those speeding vehicles with distracted, angry, and anxious creatures at the wheel. You're relying upon blind faith they won’t hammer their brakes or punch the gas. And there might be a lesson here.
But who are these insomniacs and mutants who ride the suburban highways after midnight? I try to imagine their lives: the blonde in a Honda blowing kisses to herself in the rearview, the exhausted man with purple skin in a rusty pickup, the kid with wraparound shades on my bumper, teeth flashing like he wants to gnaw it. It’s enough to rattle the best of us, which brings us to tonight’s broadcast: five reassuring songs for midnight driving—sleek and glossy, something that sounds like the sight of neon washing across your hood.
The other day, my friend M. told me I might enjoy a band called the Glass Beams. Fortunately, I misheard their name, and that’s how I discovered my new favorite band, the Glass Beads: slick Ukrainian cold wave that kicks off tonight’s mix, followed by Tropic of Cancer’s heavenly reverb, then Robert Görl’s ‘Mit Dir,’ which might be the most perfect song ever made on this planet. Forty-one years later, it still sounds like the future. Then we have a deep cut from the high priests of night driving, Chromatics, before concluding with a glorious detour through Japan circa 1985. While stitching this mixtape together, I discovered C. has very strong opinions about her night driving soundtrack, and I thank her for making it better.
- Glass Beads - City of Anger
Therapy | Fabrika Records, 2020 | More - Tropic of Cancer - Court of Devotion
Restless Idylls | Blackest Ever Black, 2013 | More - Robert Görl - Mit Dir
Mute, 1983 | More - Chromatics - Lady Night Drive
Cherry | Italians Do It Better, 2018 | More - Tomo Akikawabaya - A Dream of No Pillow
The Invitation of The Dead | Minimal Wave, 1985 | More
Also includes reverberations of some sad-sack country music via Jack Greene and Hank Williams, a few grainy loops, and some paranoid ramblings I recorded from AM radio. You can download it here or listen below. If you prefer Spotify, here's a playlist, although you won't get any reverb or radio chatter.
Midnight Radio 003 | Download
When I get into bed after a bout of night driving, I like to hear someone tell me about the past. Fall of Civilizations is my favorite thing for this, and I can’t recommend it strongly enough. It's pure class, and feels timely these days. But be warned: Carthage is a heartbreak.
